Reflexions and Jubilees 1835, 1842, 1910 and 1935

As early as in 1812 appeared the first publications, engaging with the history of the Oktoberfest. Written in some parts by ocular witnesses such as Anton Baumgartner (1769-1831), consisting in others of compilations of older programmes and reports, they attest to the interest of Munich citizens who wished to reflect on and celebrate their young popular festival.

In particular, for its importance as a place of representation of the royal family, the Oktoberfest was celebrated repeatedly with great expenditure. City and royal family used diverse jubilees to put themselves on a stage. Among the celebrations during the reign of Ludwig I (1786-1868) in particular the festivities of 1835 and 1842 excelled. In 1835 the king’s silver wedding anniversary was celebrated and, thus, also the 25th anniversary of the first celebration. The son and successor of Ludwig,
Maximilian II. (1811-1864) married in 1842. Both events were accompanied by splendid parades, which were documented in detail by the lithographer Gustav Kraus (1804-1852).

For the centenary in the year 1910, the city of Munich held the most magnificent Oktoberfest ever. For the sumptuous celebrations appeared among other publications three official commemorative festschrifts as well as a never before reached number of privately published programme guides. 25 years later, in 1935, the 125th jubilee served above all for the self-representation of NS ideology.

Early Descriptions of the Oktoberfest

The jurist Anton Baumgartner (1769-1831) originated from the same bourgeois Munich family as Franz Baumgartner who had provided the ideas for and had won the first horse race of 1810. From 1799 to his dismissal from office in 1805, Anton Baumgartner had been director of the police forces in Munich and served from 1809 as the city’s government building surveyor. He composed numerous works, in particular descriptions of events held in Munich and about the history of the city. From his pen originate the three depictions presented here, which constitute the earliest descriptions of the festivity. Apart from the official report on the feast by Andreas von Dall'Armi on the 1810 Oktoberfest and apart from the programmes preserved, Baumgartner is the most important textual witness on the atmosphere during the early Oktoberfests.

The Oktoberfest-Buch published anonymously in1827 mainly analyses the official programmes and reports of the Landwirtschaftlicher Verein in Bayern (Agricultural Association in Bavaria) and limits its work mostly to the creation of a summary of the material that appeared in there. The continuation of the work beyond the year 1827 had been announced but was not followed by a publication.

The Jubilee of 1835

In 1835, the royal couple, Ludwig I (1786-1868) and Therese (1792-1854), celebrated their silver anniversary. Therefore, the Oktoberfest and the foundation of the Landwirtschaftliche Verein in Bayern (Agricultural Association in Bavaria) also celebrated their 25th anniversary. The Oktoberfest was organised with appropriate splendour and a grand historical festive procession provided its key moment on 4 October 1835, which the lithographer Gustav Kraus (1804-1852) documented on 24 prints.

From the court numerous pieces of poetry and memorial sheets appeared in homage, including one Hebrew poem printed on (formerly white) silk by Benedikt Mainer (d. 1870), head of the Israelitic Boys’ School, which particularly catches the eye. A further poem of homage published anonymously is preserved at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library) in two versions: apart from the normal print version, it also exists with part of the letters printed in gold and with an elaborately tooled title page.

As in the case of the numerous anonymously published literature in homage of the Kronprinzenhochzeit (crown princely wedding) of 1810 it is to be expected that the royal court was well informed about who had commissioned the creation of each poem respectively.

Whereas the report of the Landwirtschaftliche Verein in Bayern (Agricultural Association in Bavaria) distinguished itself by its special connection from the descriptions of other years, the city of Munich itself ordered in 1835 for the first time the print of an official Oktoberfest-festschrift. Therein, the librarian Ulrich von Destouches (1802-1863), from 1845 head of the Stadtchronik, had gathered together systematically the history of the first 24 Oktoberfests – in 1813 the celebrations had been cancelled because of the war.

The Princely Wedding 1842

On 12 October 1842, the wedding anniversary of his parents, Crown Prince Maximilian von Bayern (1811-1864) wed the Prussian Princess Marie Friederike (1825-1889). This event obviously influenced the Oktoberfest of that year. For this wedding, four days later 35 bridal couples from all Bavarian government districts were wed in Munich and afterwards paraded in festive attire past the Königszelt (Royal Tent) on Theresienwiese (Theresia Meadow).

Apart from the official festival programme of the entire feast a programme and a group of three lithographs by the artist Gustav Kraus (1804-1852) documented the festive procession of the bridal couples as the central event of the celebrations. The memorial book edited by F. Rudolph that same year, while superficially presenting the history of the Oktoberfest as a whole, also studies the group wedding in some considerable detail, for example by describing the attires of the single bridal couples.

The Jubilee 1910

The 75th anniversary of the Oktoberfest in 1885 was celebrated appropriately but perhaps not publicised quite so much. In 1910, however, the city of Munich took the 100th jubilee as an occasion to celebrate the event with a splendour that had not been seen before and was not ever going to be seen in future. Apart from large historicising festive events and staffage buildings, the celebrations included a substantial historical exhibition and a festive procession.

The archivist, city chronicler, historian and founder of the Munich Stadtmuseums (Municipal Museum), Ernst von Destouches (1843-1916), not only organised the exhibition but also compiled the festschrift. The publication appeared in 1910 in two editions: firstly, a particularly detailed and richly ornamented version, the Säkular-Chronik (Secular Chronicle), was distributed in only a few exemplars to selected persons. Secondly, a greatly summarised peoples’ edition was created in a larger number of copies, which also contained texts by many Bavarian authors such as Josef Ruederer (1861-1915), Josef Benno Sailer (1866-1933) or Ludwig Thoma (1867-1921). Ten years later appeared as a third version a less summarised edition of the great Säkular-Chronik.

In competition to these official festschrifts private publishing houses brought out in 1910 diverse jubilee brochures and newspapers. The Oktoberfest newspaper by Josef Benno Sailer took some kind of semi-official position. Another publication that appeared in the house of E. Stahl even underwent a second edition.

The richly illustrated Oktoberfest letter by the Cosma Company, represents numerous further souvenirs and gifts that came out in 1910 for the jubilee.

The Jubilee 1935

In 1935, two years after the NS “takeover of power”, the 125th jubilee of the Oktoberfest was celebrated. The NS authorities put the festival under the motto of "Stolze Stadt - Fröhlich Land" (Proud City – Cheerful Countryside) and attempted to re-interpret the history of the feast in their own sense. Differently to what had happened in 1910, there was no large jubilee exhibition or detailed festschrift; the festschrift of 1935 is hardly different in its format and content to the “normal” Oktoberfest newspapers of other years.

The programme of the procession, the oldest such programme printed separately in the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), documents the exact composition of the marching groups. For the first time, the groups of riflemen and those in historical costumes no longer paraded in two separate processions, but as one combined parade (even though one behind the other), in between was a historical part that tried visibly to downplay the importance of the monarchy for the Oktoberfest as much as possible. Distributed all over the procession marched delegations of diverse NS-organisations.

The official publications mostly refrained from an obvious presentation of NS symbols. While the festschrift displays only one tiny Swastika flag, the title page of the privately published Oktoberfestzeitung is far closer to the real situation of 1935, when NS symbols already characterised the Theresienwiese. In 1936, it became officially forbidden to hoist the Bavarian or Munich colours on the Oktoberfest. From now on, the groups in traditional costume and those of riflemen formed one collective festive procession.